Music Video Syncing Problem

[Mike Kujbida]

Just to confirm, the CD that you have is the audio for the video that you shot?
Video is at 48K while audio is at 44.1 so try changing the audio properties to match the video.
I’m not sure that this will help but it’s worth a try.
You could also load the audio separately into a new project, render the audio out as 48K and bring this back into your video project.

p.s. there’s no video to watch in your post 🙁

[Ted Snow]

I would first try what Mike recommended but if you can’t get that to work you might try this….

One way that I have worked around this problem is to split the CD audio track pretty frequently…maybe after every line of the song. You can then slip the audio to match the video’s audio track (zoom in pretty close and ALT+drag). The only problem with doing this is that you can end up with some pops at the split points. To fix this…just make sure ripple if turned off and do a small crossfade of a few frames at each split.

It may depend on how “busy” the song is as to whether this will work or not…but it might be worth a try. You might make a copy of your veg file by saving it as a new name and experiment with that file.

I’ve done this with really good results, but like I said it may depend on how busy the song is so…YMMV

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[Stephen Mann]

The way I read the OP was that this is two performances. One for the video and one for the audio. There’s no way they could ever be in sync unless the band was listening to the studio version while playing the second video.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Ted Snow]

Ahhh…I guess I interpreted it differently when he said…

“I shot a live performance of my brothers band. They live performance was recorded in a studio, so I have the performed audio mix on a CD”.

I was thinking he was saying that he shot the live performance as they were recording it in the studio. If it was actually two different recordings….that would definitely be a next to impossible task.

————————————————
ASUS P8P67 Deluxe MB
EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1 GB DDR 5
Intel i7 2600k 3.4 Ghz
Corsair HX750 power supply
Two Seagate Barracuda 500g SATA III drives
16 Gig G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600
Canopus ACEDVio card
Thermaltake V9 BlacX Edition case
Xigmatek Dark Knight CPU Cooler
Win 7 Pro
VEGAS 8.0
VEGAS 11.0 32 & 64 bit
Sony VX2100
Sony HVR-Z7U
Sony HDR-CX130
Alesis HD24

[Karly Melrose]

How was the audio recorded in the studio before it found its way onto CD?

If analogue tape was used at any point, then that will be your problem! Tape recorders don’t necessarily run at a constant, fixed speed, and are unlikely to be running at the same speed as your camera. Which means the speed of the audio recording might be different to your video recording, making it difficult to sync up.

One thing you could try doing is to stretch the audio so it fits – find one point at the start of the audio and sync it to picture (crop off everything from before that point). Then find a point towards the end of the audio that you intend to use as a sync point. Crop off everything after that point. Then stretch the end of the audio to the sync point on the picture. (only problem with this idea – stretching has never actually worked for me in Vegas 10, so don’t know if it’ll work for you either)

Personally I’d avoid splicing bits out of music audio at various intervals if I were you, unless you can do it without it being noticeable. But try it an see. Sometimes though even small cuts can affect the flow of music (unless your band’s time keeping is all over the place anyway!). Of course, whether you can use this method at all depends on which way the visuals/audio is out of sync anyway; if the picture is running ahead of the sound, then cutting bits out of audio won’t help – it’ll just make it worse!

Either way, ideally I’d recommend editing video rather than the music track. You don’t say how many cameras you’ve used. If it’s two, then it’s no problem – just cut to a different angle whenever you need to re-sync. I suspect it’s just one camera though – which means jump cuts at every point you need to bring it into sync. So turn it into a ‘pop’ video, and add effects to different shots. EG increase contrast for ‘clips’, make some shots black and white, add grain effects from time-to-time, and especailly use the crop and zoom to tool to deliberately emphasise the jump. Maybe add some quick fades to black in places too. Have fun with it! (If it’s for a whole set of songs though, it might be come a bit tiresome, for the viewer I mean!)

[Tony Naj]

First off I would like to say thanks for all the feedback.
The problem was more simple.

Ted Snow was actually correct in how I “thought” I shot the video. The recording was done live during the recording. I shot 3 different takes of the entire song. I forgot after I got my last take they went and did another run through. Just so happens the last performance was the one they used to actually use on the CD, so the timing/tempo is off from my shots.

I’ll try cutting it up a bit. I have a few close ups and 2-shots that I can mix in and make it look alright.

Thanks a lot guys, greatly appreciated.